In the Library
Bel Ami
Guy de Maupassant, 1885
- Form
- Form Novel
- Difficulty
- Difficulty Moderate
- Reading time
- Reading time 8 hours
- Translated by
- Translated by Vizetelly and Company
- Chapters
- Chapters 18
- Length
- Length 108k words
£1.99
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He had just three francs forty centimes in his pocket to carry him to the end of the month.
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About the book
Georges Duroy has three francs forty in his pocket and a soldier's mustache, and as he crosses Paris he keeps catching his own reflection in the shop windows, testing the effect. He knows precisely what he has to sell: not talent, not money, but his face, and the boredom of clever women married to duller men. Guy de Maupassant follows him up through a newsroom that invents its opinions to order, and through the beds of Clotilde de Marelle, Madeleine Forestier, and Virginie Walter, each woman a rung on a ladder he calls love and they call being chosen. It is a small girl, Clotilde's daughter, who first calls him Bel-Ami, beautiful friend, the one true affection in a cold arithmetic, and the title never stops sounding like an accusation after that. What Maupassant sees with such pitiless clarity is how completely a smile can be laundered into a byline, a fortune, a bride stolen from her own parents at the altar. He walks out of the church married and triumphant, searching the crowd for the next face worth wanting.